My Step-Dad’s Not Mean, He’s Just Adjusting

If you read Christine’s blog, you know that the two of us spent most of the day trying to avoid working on our essays. What she didn’t tell you is that she was sitting in my room while she was writing that blog while I worked on my essay and we watched “Death to Smoochy.” It’s a great movie that shows how corrupt the children’s entertainment industry is.

Robin Williams plays the disgraced children’s entertainer Rainbow Randolph. He is found to be taking money from parents so that their kids can dance on his show and sit in the rainbow chair. This is freakish because I can just imagine how truthful it is. How cutthroat to you think the parents were whose lovable children were on “Barney and Friends” or “Lamb Chop’s Play-Along?”

After Rainbow Randolph leaves the kids network has to get a new squeaky-clean replacement. Enter: Smoochy the Rhino. Shelton Mopes, who plays Smoochy, is a vegan; gun-hating, clean-cut musician who plays guitar for heroin addicts at a methadone clinic and loves his wheat grass. Although the character is exaggerated I think this is just the kind of guy who America needs running its children’s entertainment, especially on TV. Mopes actually cares about kids, not the money he gets from performing for them. He’s horrified at the thought of telling kids to eat refined sugar loaded cookies. He prefers to tell them about snacks “sweetened with juice for an energy boost.”

This brings me to real-life kid’s entertainment. If you turn on a TV channel geared towards kids today the first thing you’ll notice it tons of commercials. We spent a lot of time talking about the effect of the media on kids in my Intro to Mass Communication class. A video we watched showed how both TV show programmers and ad agencies hire psychologists to tell them what will get kids to watch, and keep watching. It turns out that kids under about five years old can’t tell the difference between when a show stops and the commercials begin. In commercials geared towards kid’s adults are almost always shown as mean and stupid people who can’t possibly understand children. They are mean because they won’t give the kids what they want. The good parent is the one who lets their child stay up later, and gives them the product being sold.

If Smoochy ruled the airwaves of kid’s programming this would not happen. Shows would be educational and entertaining for kids. They would not be mindless entertainment filled with violence and unhealthy foods. Kids on Smoochy’s show are encouraged to dance and run around during the show, very much unlike most shows that hypnotize kids into watching for hours as they sit on their ever-growing larger bums.

So remember kids, a step dad is a lot like a new puppy. They need patience and love while they adjust to their new surroundings. But remember - if he is ever abusive to you or mommy, what are the magic numbers?